Android Reports: Google, LG, don’t want Qualcomm’s super-expensive Snapdragon 865

Reports: Google, LG, don’t want Qualcomm’s super-expensive Snapdragon 865
Can I complain about NFC, and their apparent ignoring of the competing substandards?
Samsung unveils new mid-range smartphone with quad rear camera setup
Google Photos adds text selection hint on mobile, upload origin info on web, and prepares to let you mute videos
Magisk v20.4 released with script consistency changes and bug fixes
YouTube 15.12.33 prepares to add video quality preferences on Android
LG G9 will be a mid-ranger with S765G chipset, 1080p screen, according to report from Korea
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Xiaomi ends MIUI 11 beta development in favor of MIUI 12
Redmi K30 Pro promotional video is all about speed

Reports: Google, LG, don’t want Qualcomm’s super-expensive Snapdragon 865

Posted: 24 Mar 2020 09:18 AM PDT

submitted by /u/c0mplexx
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Can I complain about NFC, and their apparent ignoring of the competing substandards?

Posted: 24 Mar 2020 05:04 PM PDT

As a pretext here, most of you will not care, or ever experience the problems I am about to talk about. Most of these revolves are niche use-cases, international travel and interoperability, and the problems with standards, substandards, and manufacturers just not being transparent about their devices. It has no real effect on most people's use of their device, and most people would be better off not paying attention to it. It's just a gripe of mine, because it shouldn't be a problem, in my opinion, at all. It's a seriously annoying thing to have to dig through in order to find out, "nope, it's just a feature we advertised support for, but really we only support X variant of".

Anyways, onto the rant.

I'm going to start this off by breaking a myth most people believe, without knowing it's a myth or that they even believe it. NFC is not a standard, but a set of standards. Here's a lovely diagram demonstrating the clusterfuck that is NFC. If you don't understand the diagram that well, it's okay. I don't think the NFC forum does either because technically, a Type 3 tag is partially readable by an NFC A/B device; but cannot be transmitted and various other bullshit because fuck you. The gist is basically this;

Not only are the 5 competing tag types, 1-4 plus the NFC forum formatted tag.

There are also, 8-9 competing protocols (plus an additional application protocol that is competing with 2-3 other protocols that are overarching, but 3 protocols don't even use an application protocol.

And, AT LEAST six competing product standards, one which is not mutually compatible with the rest.

Yet in spite of this massive clusterfuck, the NFC, GSMArena, device makers, basically no one, makes any attempt to specify which protocols, tag types, whatever, these phones use or support. This madness for me, all started when I first started transitioning into trying to use Google Pay for all of my loyalty and charge cards. In the process of this I tried to figure out how to add my SUICA card from Japan to it, since I know you can do this...but it just wouldn't work. Why? Well, because my phone doesn't support NFC-F or the FeLiCa variant of the protocol. It probably doesn't support tag 3 entirely either. So then how would I have known? Well, FeLiCa for phones is branded as おサイフケータイ(Osaifu-Keitai) or Wallet-cellphone. Unfortunately, these phones are almost exclusively sold in Japan.

However, I figured, since FeLiCa was part of the NFC standard set, my NFC-supporting phone would support it...right? No. Because, as I said before, it is a set of standards. Not all standards are necessarily universal, and FeLiCa/NFC-F is almost exclusive to Japan. But now I have a dilemma. How do I know which specific NFC standards my device supports? Well, I simply don't know, because it's clear that no one actually cares. What's even more confusing is that, using specialized apps my phone can read the transaction history on the SUICA card, even though it can't work with NFC-F apparently? Why? I have no fucking clue.

So I think that gets everything off my chest. Being locked up due to this virus probably hasn't helped me festering over this. Oh, and a fun ending fact. Apple's iPhones and the Google Pixel series universally support NFC-F, including Osaifu-Keitai. So, I guess my choices are getting more and more limited as I want an actually useful international phone. I either buy Apple or Google in country, or import a phone from Japan. ffs

Edit: Relevant xkcd.

submitted by /u/continous
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Samsung unveils new mid-range smartphone with quad rear camera setup

Posted: 25 Mar 2020 03:37 AM PDT